


Splattered Paint and Bullet Wounds

by mgmercieca



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 19:52:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3394256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mgmercieca/pseuds/mgmercieca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is an AU Bellarke piece that sort of explores what they could have been if they lived in our world from the start. Never dodging explosions or fixing bullet wounds. The only alliance they have to form is with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splattered Paint and Bullet Wounds

There are worlds where Clarke Griffin is allowed to paint for hours, even days on end, if she wants. She has never touched a gun in her life, and she wouldn't. Paint brushes are better; there's no painful recoil in the first stroke on a canvas, no watching the blood, the life, drip out of a human being in front of you. Only the satisfaction of a finished work. 

There are worlds where Bellamy Blake prefers the turning of pages to the yell of a command. He would be an excellent leader, Octavia always tells him so, but he will never have to be one of legions. He turns the pages of his newest tome on yet another long-dead Greek hero, and he feels the satisfaction of knowledge, instead of the satisfying crunch of his enemies bones under heavy boots. 

They meet on a sunny college quad, both immersed in their own minds, too busy to notice the other walking towards them. Clarke drops her books, and the paints she was carrying splatter on the ground at her feet, making a red and black mess of the pavement. Somehow it reminds her of the splattering of blood, of gunpowder falling to the ground and mixing with the dirt. She has never seen these things, has not bothered to see much other than the inside of a studio, so it bothers her. Bellamy drops the notebooks he was holding, pages and pages of words falling lightly to the ground and seeming to mix with the colors splattered there. It reminds him of blood soaking through already thin jackets, of black boots smudging the grey floor of a space station. He has never seen anything like this, preferring to lock himself in libraries until they close, in Octavia's room reading to her until she falls asleep, so it bothers him. 

Clarke looks up at the stranger, and he looks up at her. She tries to smile through her frustration at dropping her new and expensive paint. He's handsome, but she pushes the feeling that comes along with that down and lets her frustration win for a moment. The false smile falls of her face, and she begins to pick up her books. He drops down as well, prying up his paint-splattered notes. 

"Watch it! Don't you look where you're going?"

He stares back at her, and then his anger kicks in. He's always been terrible at controlling it. He's only ever found two things that can take it away, that being his sister, and the other being a book. This girl, though she was very pretty, was the current cause of his temper. He takes in her nice clothing, her smooth hands, and the flecks of paint in her hair. He tries to shove down the rise of frustration he feels when he gathers that she's one of the trust fund kids at the school. 

"Maybe I would have seen you, if you would pay some attention, princess."

The nickname infuriates her, and she gathers up her belongings in a huff, leaving the paint on the ground behind her. She glares at him heavily. 

"Well, thanks for nothing."

She turns on her heel and lifts her chin as she stomps off. He watches her go with his hands full of red paint, he tries to shake the image of blood soaked hands that keeps popping into his brain. As she leaves, he almost smiles. It wakes up a feeling in him, almost of recollection. It feels good, and he decides to find out about this girl. 

"You're welcome, princess." He mutters, turning away. 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clarke slaps her paintbrush on a blank canvas. She tries to shake off the flash of memory she gets at the sound, because the flash is a gunshot, and the visual is a man falling down for the last time. 

Bellamy walks in the classroom, and the students in the room all turn around and stare at him, especially. This is the kind of class where all of the students are easily distracted, jarred by any sort of movement, let alone a handsome new boy walking in. Clarke looks up startled as someone sits next to her. People usually steer clear of her in painting classes, due to her nearly ferocious level of focus. Make a wrong move and you could have a paintbrush through your neck, and everyone in the art department knew it. This new boy was clearly insane, or just clueless. Clarke glared at him as he settled in, smiling smugly with that dumb mouth. 

"What, are you doing here? Stalking me?"

Bellamy continued to smirk as he looked at her and the smear of red paint on her otherwise glaringly white canvas. 

"Never, princess. Just showing up for class. Thought that's what we were supposed to do on the first day of school. Maybe I've been doing it wrong all these years."

She bit down an angry retort when she realized that everyone in the class was silent, staring at them. She looked back at him and narrowed her eyes, just once. He continued to smirk.

"This isn't over." She muttered out lowly as the Teacher came to the middle of the room and introduced herself. 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Bellamy sits in a nearly empty library, a book open in his hands, and his mind lost amongst the words on the page. This was the only bliss he'd ever known, falling into a story and letting the words just swallow him whole, take him over entirely. He was just about to turn another page when he saw an unmistakable flash of blonde hair, and before he knew it, a pair of blazing blue eyes were right in front of his. In them was a nearly inquisitive expression.

"I didn't know you read." 

"What, princess, your rich friends are too busy tonight, or you're just trying out slumming?"

She looked nearly offended, taking a forceful step back. And then, just as quick, resolve flashed in her eyes, and she sat down in front of him. He was beginning to realize that he could read her moods by her eyes. He tucked that away for later and tried to shove down the smile that threatened to bloom on his face at her actions. He failed, but turned it into a smirk instead. 

"I knew it. You can't resist a challenge. That's what this is, isn't it? Princess wants a bit of a game?"

He decided to give her one. 

"First of all, stop calling me that. Second, what do you mean? You don't even know my name, how could you possibly know anything about me?"

Bellamy had some friends in the filing office on campus. He knew a lot about her. He just wasn't going to tell her that. 

"I know more than you think, Clarke."

Damn it. 

Her eyes grew wide at the sound of her name, and then narrowed. 

"Fine, Bellamy. I have my ways of finding things out too. You know, Octavia is really very nice." Clarke smiled at her advantage. 

"How do you know about her?"

"We have advanced chemistry together. She started talking about some brooding brother, about how she thinks he needs to start dating more. It wasn't until she showed me a picture of you that I realized she was talking about you."

Bellamy attempted not to look embarrassed that his sister was trying to sell him around campus to every girl she met, but pushed that down and settled for looking angry instead. 

"Are you friends now? You and your rich friends taking pity on a less fortunate girl?"

Clarke had the grace to look confused before putting together what he meant. Anger flashed on her face to match his, quickly replaced by uncertainty. 

"Is it so hard to believe that I would like her?"

Bellamy thought of his sister, how she smiled at people on the street, how she always felt like she had to prove herself, how she wanted to take care of injured animals for a living, and he conceded with a sigh. Octavia Blake was no harder to like than a ray of sunshine on a dreary day. 

"No. Sorry." He muttered under his breath. It wouldn't be so terrible for Octavia to have someone like Clarke in her life. Clarke was unstoppable in all the right ways, fierce and smart, but warm when she wanted to be. Not that he had been watching her over the past few weeks, or anything. 

Clarke leaned forward and flipped his book over to see the cover. He tried to be annoyed, but he couldn't shove down the feeling he got when he smelled her vanilla perfume mixed with the sharp smell of fresh paint, the way she always smelled. Not that he had noticed that, either. 

She cocked an eyebrow at his choice. She had never really understood some people's fascination with reading fictional stories about long-dead civilizations, but she looked up at him quickly, and realized that she understood why it fit him. She could grow to like the Blake siblings, she thought, and then quickly shoved that thought down with all of her thoughts about him. Like how he always smelled like pressed pages and bonfire wood. Not that she had noticed. And, also, that his dimples were deeply distracting when he smiled. Damn it.

He was impervious to other people judging his taste in novels at this point, and the copy of The Odyssey lying open in front of him that had been worn down to nearly nothing from years of constant reading had become one part of a shield he raised whenever his love of novels should come into question. In front of her, though, he found himself wondering about what she thought of what he was reading. 

"The Odyssey. Interesting. I could never actually get through that one, myself. Staring at words on a page too long always puts me to sleep."

He laughed lightly, and those dimples came out. Damn it. 

"You just have to put yourself there. Picture yourself standing on Calypso's island, facing down Scylla, navigating battles. I can never seem to find that much excitement anywhere else, to be honest."

She smiled, watching him talking about this was making her feel things she wished she could stop feeling. It wasn't working. 

"I don't think I'd be very good in a battle. I've never lead anyone, let alone into war." 

"Oh, I think that we can surprise ourselves in situations like that. You never know what you can do until you're in a situation where you have to do it to survive."

He wasn't sure where the words came from; he had never been in any situation even close to that. Sure, he had always had to work to keep he and his sister going, especially after their mother died, but he always made sure they were as close to comfort as they could get on his wages. The words bothered him, but he could tell they registered something in her, so he let the feeling go quickly, trying to change the subject. 

"But it's like that for you, isn't it? With your painting? I've seen you paint, Clarke. You have talent."

She blushed, but didn't duck her head away from him. She didn't want him to see that it bothered her, the fact that he had watched her so close as she had been trying to stop thinking about him. 

"Yeah, I guess it is. I can't even describe it. It's like nothing else I've ever felt. I can just pick up a brush and a canvas and everything just flows out of me; my soul, my heart, my brain. It's all right there on the canvas." She couldn't believe she was sharing this with him so openly, but there was something about the dark gaze of his eyes that made her feel like she could talk for hours about anything. 

He smiled knowingly at her words, "See, you know what it's like."

"I guess I do."

They sat there for a moment, Bellamy's smile fading as he took her in, her strong expression, her fierce eyes, her soft-looking blonde hair. He snapped his eyes back down to his worn book with a rough cough, and she looked away too. She stood up, and Bellamy drew his brows together as he realized that he could liken watching her go to a bullet wound that was only getting worse. But he had never even been near a gun, and she was much too far away from him, too far even to hurt him. She walked away a bit, stopped suddenly, and then turned around and smiled at him. She took a big gulp of air through her smile, like she was just about to jump into something. Maybe she was. 

"Do you want to get coffee sometime? Continue this, you know." She trailed off at the end. Funny, he didn't know princesses got nervous. 

He only hesitated for half a second before looking up into her eager face. He put on his signature smirk, and for once, used its powers for good. 

"Sure, princess. Any time." 

She smiled brightly before turning around and walking away, only looking back at him once. He looked down at his book, smiling, and thought that maybe he finally understood all of these memories of gunshots and bleeding wounds. He realized that in all of them, he knew that flash of blonde hair in the corner of his vision. 

After all, all of the pain and sacrifice he had read about between bindings, all of the ghost wounds that he sometimes swore he could still feel, it was leading up to her.


End file.
